The Dillon Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new and past paintings by Hector Leonardi, one of America's most accomplished painters. This is Leonardi's first exhibition in three years and the first at the Dillon Gallery.

Leonardi comes from the second generation of American abstractionists, after the sturm and drang had passed and painters could be free to explore all the possibilities liberated by surface of the canvas. A student of Josef Albers at Yale in the early 1950s, Leonardi mastered color as few of his contemporaries did. But as John Russell has written, “the homage paid here is not to the square. It is, rather, to the ingenuity of light, which can define and redefine a given structure in a hundred different ways....It's a work of wonderment.”

Over the decades, Leonardi's work has received glowing reviews in a number of publications and he has developed a loyal following of collectors. But a decade ago he entered upon a period of sustained creativity and experimentation that has resulted in a series of dramatic breakthroughs. The paintings in the exhibition reflect his current vision and several of the compelling paths he has traveled to arrive there. Leonardi works in acrylic, painting directly on the canvas and using strips of paint to build up an intricate surface texture. Each painting develops from a cluster of scpecific colors and tonalities, like a musical suite, and in its energy, complexity and optical dazzle the work manages to unite th most diverse influences, including, Josef Albers, Gustav Klimt, Paul Signac and Jackson Pollock.

But with these Leonardi can also evoke a powerful undertone of darkness, violence and mystery. it is the power that prompted critic John Yau to write of Leonardi's previous exhibition, “In making art that looks back at us without blinking, Leonardi is a master.”

Leonardi has had many one-man exhibitions, most recently at the Viewing Room and at Robert Steele Gallery, both in New York City. His paintings are included in amany public and private collections.